


like an untimely frost

by cynical_optimist



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Contemplation of Suicide, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Neil Perry is the little spoon I will fight you on this, Todd-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 03:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5190008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynical_optimist/pseuds/cynical_optimist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Todd grieves.</p><p> </p><p>“Did you know how much I loved you?” he asks the bare room, and it is empty like Neil’s body is, like his eyes were as his father pulled him away, like the condolences of Mr Nolan.<br/>Todd closes his eyes. Of course, Neil would have answered, of course I know.<br/>But Neil is not there, only Todd and two beds and a room that is half empty, and it feels like maybe Todd’s heart is half empty, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like an untimely frost

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is an angst-fest. Sorry?
> 
>  
> 
> Title from Romeo and Juliet, as referenced in the story. All other poetry is my own, and for that I sincerely apologise.

The day before Neil died, Todd helped him run through his lines once more.

“I need to know them perfectly,” he had begged, clutching Todd’s hands. “Just once, before I go to rehearsal. Please?”

Todd, who had not been able to say no to the beautiful, fiery boy since he’d met him, had nodded and accepted the script. Neil had whooped and leapt to his feet, jumping off his bed with an energy he seemed never to be rid of. He had seemed alight then, the passion he had felt contagious and spreading through the room like a flood, or perhaps a virus. Todd wasn’t sure.

He had laughed and bounced and pressed smiling kisses to Todd’s mouth whenever he completed a longer line without mistakes, and Todd had laughed along with him, for how could he not? Upon leaving for rehearsal, Neil had kissed Todd again, and he could feel the phantom pressure until dinner, and he had smiled for hours.

 

That was the last time he had seen him truly, completely happy, and in the hours after Charlie’s quiet, heartbroken announcement, he keeps the memory buried deep in his heart and sobs out his sorrow to the cold night air.

“It’s okay,” Charlie tells him, and it’s not, because all he can see is the empty look in Neil’s eyes through the frosted glass of his father’s car, the fire that was present just the day before gone without a trace. As if it had never been there. As if the boy who stood on stage proudly, despite his father looming on the wings, had never existed.

Neil cannot be dead, because Neil is passionate, and Neil is inspiring, and Neil is funny, and Neil is warm, and Neil is comforting, _and Neil is alive, the most living person that Todd has ever met._

 

Ten days before Neil died, he had curled up with Todd under both their blankets on one of their beds, and he had wrapped his long arms around his torso and pressed his cheek to his collarbone. Their feet tangled together, the radiator in the corner slowly lulling them to sleep with a soft rumble that had no rhythm or rhyme, but was beautiful all the same.

Neil stirred, fingers finding purchase in Todd’s shirt. “Sometimes I think that all I want to do is act,” he said, a whisper that could barely be heard in the nearly silent room, and Todd, half asleep, had only pressed his lips to Neil’s hair in acknowledgement. “I can be anyone I want to be.”

“Yeah?” he had murmured, and he thought, _I like you just the way you are_. But he did not say that, because that was not the point, and he was so tired that he could barely hear Neil’s reply, let alone answer properly.

“Yeah.”

 

It is two days after Neil’s death, and Todd goes to class. He had not done any of the homework he was assigned, and he can see the teachers comparing him to Jeff through their quiet pity.

“Today I thought we might write another poem,” Mr Keating says, and there is a heaviness to his voice. It is his last class, everyone knows, informed through the whispers of inquiries and accusations and blame, always the blame.

Todd looks down at his exercise book, page clean and free of marks, and his pencil trembles in his fingers.

Mr Keating turns to the blackboard, and writes, in his big, sweeping script, _LIKE AN UNTIMELY FROST_. “Romeo and Juliet,” he says, back to them. “I have always found that writing aids in the process of healing.” He turns, swallows. “So here is your prompt; now write it. This is not an assignment to share with the class. I will only check to see if you have written anything, not what you have written. You have until lunch.” With that, he nods jerkily, and sits down at his desk, something he has rarely done in all his time as their teacher.

Todd stares at the paper in front of him, and sets the tip of his pencil on it. Neil, he writes on the uppermost line, and chews on his lip. His throat aches.

_When you are gone_

_Your presence lingers_

Todd stops then, and he sets down his pencil carefully. Squeezing his eyes shut, he takes a deep breath, because it has been two days and that is enough time for a friend to have begun to recover. He stays like that, fists clenched and head down, until Mr Keating leans over his shoulder. He has written two lines, and for one awful, terrifying moment, he fears that he will force him to create poetry about Neil in front of the class, and he will not be able to handle that, not now, not ever.

Instead, he leans closer and whispers, “Sometimes tears are the greatest poetry we can ever utter,” and Todd shudders, with a quick intake of breath. He knows there are droplets on the page, droplets that have rolled down his nose slowly, silently, as he tries to think of a way to describe the deep ache that Neil’s absence has left.

When he finally leaves the classroom, the lunch bell ringing in his ears, he notices with something that is somehow not shock that he is not the only one with red-rimmed eyes.

 

Three days before Neil’s death, Todd had stared out the little window in their dorm to the stars, barely visible through the layers of rolling clouds, and looked back at Neil’s prone form on the bed they had taken to sharing—“because it’s so cold in the winter, Todd”—and grinned to himself, and wrote,

_A feeling_

_Like a hug, almost_

_Wrapping its arms round your heart_

_It’s reeling_

_Floating like a ghost_

_Knowing that nothing can part_

_Your heart from his_

It was not a poem to share with Mr Keating, or the Dead Poets, or even Neil, but it was his, and it wasn’t his best piece, but it was more than he had dared to write at the start of the year. He tapped his pencil against the notebook, looked back at Neil, grinned again. He crossed out a line and rewrote it.

_Knowing nought could ever part_

“Todd?” Neil asked, voice slurred with sleep. “What the heck are you doing over there?”

“Poetry,” Todd answered, setting down his pencil.

“It’s too cold to be out of bed.”

Todd sighed; he could always finish it the next day. “Okay,” he said, and he tried to sound annoyed, at least a little, but he knew he failed. Climbing into the bed, he pulled the covers over him, and Neil settled on his chest, drawing his knees up away from his toes.

“’re cold,” he muttered, mouth buried in the cloth of Todd’s pyjamas. “Shouldn’t have left.”

“Sorry,” Todd chuckled, and he held Neil tight to his chest, and he thought, _I’ll never leave you, damn the practicalities_. Then he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, nose buried in Neil’s hair.

 

It is the day of Neil’s death, and his body is growing cold in his father’s parlour, and Todd doesn’t know. He is asleep—and that is something that haunts him for the longest time after, that he is asleep while Neil is walking down the hall in the cold and picking up his father’s gun and placing it to his head and pulling the trigger and falling, falling, falling, leaving.

Todd is dreaming of kisses under flowered branches in the snow and beings of cold and darkness that draw away joy and dreams and love, and he wakes to Charlie’s voice.

He goes to protest, to get angry at Charlie, but the tears on his face, the desperate horror in his eyes, makes him pause.

“What is it?” he asks, and he’s still half asleep, but he’s waking up quickly, because why would something that makes Charlie cry also make him pity him? Has Mr Keating been fired? He looks over to the door, and Knox and the others stand there, and there is a devastation in their eyes that he hasn’t seen since he was ten and Jeff’s best friend died, and he’d stayed curled with this brother until the sobs passed.

“Neil’s dead,” Charlie says, and everything in Todd just _stops_ for a moment.

“What?” he asks, because that cannot be true, he had to have heart wrong, is Charlie playing a practical joke on him? It’s not funny, but he wants to laugh, because it’s not true, either.

Charlie’s face twists, and he swallows thickly, and really he should have been an actor, because his acting is just too convincing. “The teachers are talking about it. I don’t… I don’t know the details but they’re saying that he killed himself, or that his father shot him. Todd, he’s dead.”

“No-- _no._ ”

“I’m so sorry—“

“ _No_!”

And he thinks, later, this is not the way that a roommate should act, even if he is a best friend. This is not the way that he should be told, cautiously, delicately, fearful of his reaction, ready to catch him and hold him and cry with him as he tries not to scream.

But in that moment, worries of discovery, of acting right and keeping secrets, do not matter. What matters is that Charlie’s arms are tight around him, constricting him, keeping him in his bed even though he really just wants to see for himself, because it cannot be true. It cannot be true. It cannot be true.

What matters is that Charlie’s arms are not Neil’s, and that Neil’s are probably cold and limp and dead. What matters is that his last memory of Neil is of him staring out the window, so apologetic and so resolved.

 _We were happy_ , he thinks, and cries.

 

Thirty-five days before Neil died, they sat in the cave of the Dead Poet’s Society and laughed at the world.

Nuwanda stood as tall as he could in the space and recited a poem dramatically, and Todd could feel Neil shaking with laughter beside him, and he wrote in the minutes,

_6: Sonnet 128, performed by Nuwanda, is rendered a new meaning_

Neil leaned over his shoulder, close but not too close for a crowded setting with other students around, and read it, warm breath in his ear.

“You could recite your own poems, sometime,” he said, and Todd tried not to shiver.

“I-I don't think so,” he answered. His poetry, though he has been practicing, is not for public consumption.

Neil sighed. “Alright,” he said. “But you should know you're probably the best writer out of all of us here.”

And Todd thought, _that isn't really the problem_. It was not the quality of words he despaired over, but the delivery. He was not wild and fierce like Nuwanda, or bright and charismatic like Neil, not even desperately lovesick like Knox. He was simple Todd, generally average and quiet and far duller than his brother.

 

It is ten days after Neil’s death, and his side of the room is bare.

Todd had left when his parents came to collect it, and he told Meeks that it was to give them privacy. Meeks had given him a pitying look and nodded silently, and it was obvious he did not believe him.

When Neil’s parent’s leave, Todd returns to the room, and stares at the empty bed, knees weak.

 _Did you know?_ he wanted to ask Neil’s mother as he passed them in the hall. _Did you know that we lay together in the the bed you have just sobbed over more often than we were separate? Did you know that I loved him more than you ever dreamed of? Do you know that I love him still?_

His knees tremble and he sits heavily on his bed.

“Did you know how much I loved you?” he asks the bare room, and it is empty like Neil’s body is, like his eyes were as his father pulled him away, like the condolences of Mr Nolan.

Todd closes his eyes. _Of course,_ Neil would have answered, _of course I know._

But Neil is not there, only Todd and two beds and a room that is half empty, and it feels like maybe Todd’s heart is half empty, too.

He lays back on his bed, water swelling behind his eyelids, and lands on an uncomfortable crumple of paper. Wiping his cheeks, he sits and retrieves it, and it takes him a moment to decipher the familiar title.

 _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , it reads, in proud, bright lettering. Neil’s script, tossed to the side in a fit of rage, most likely, left behind because it did not fit with the Perry’s image of their perfect son.

It may not be an item of the perfect to-be medical student, but it is so very Neil, in all that he was rash and vibrant and passionate and alive. Todd’s Neil, who had wanted nothing more than to be himself.

Todd shudders, and a tear marrs the pristine cover.

 

Eighty-seven days before Neil’s death, Todd stared at him over the top of his Latin homework. He was doing his own homework, of course, lips silently forming the nouns and verbs and adverbs. And Todd, try as he might to prevent it, was fixated.

Neil looked up, and Todd turned back to his book. “What's up?” the boy across from him asked.

Todd met his eyes innocently. “What--nothing.”

Neil grinned. “Geez, Todd, you're probably the worst liar I've ever encountered. You were staring at me just five seconds ago.”

Todd shook his head, and Neil closed his book sharply.

“Come on, Todd,” he said, crossing over the short space between their beds. “You were staring.”

“I-I don't know what you're talking about.” He was blushing, and he knew he was blushing. Neil grabbed his chin gently, turning his face toward him, and Todd looked away desperately.

“Say,” he said. “You're looking rather ill. You know you won't be reading tonight, don't you? I haven't made you before, and I won't make you now.”

“I don't--” Todd had said, and his eyes had flickered down to Neil’s mouth, just inches from his, and he saw them curl into a smirk.

“Oh,” Neil had said, and his smirk had widened into a grin. His hand slid from Todd’s chin to the back of his head, curling into his hair. Todd’s eyes flickered back to his.

“Neil,” he breathed.

Neil kissed him, then, on Todd’s bed with Latin homework strewn over them and the threat of another of the boys barging in without knocking. Their teeth knocked the first time, and they drew back, laughing, and then Neil kissed him again, soft, warm, and pretty much perfect.

  
  


It is the fourth day after Neil’s death, and Todd has just signed a paper that dooms Mr Keating. Dooms his soul, maybe, if Mr Nolan has anything to say about it. His hands are still shaking, and he hopes, viciously, secretly, that his writing was illegible.

He tears away from his parents without a goodbye, and they do not follow him. _They would have followed Jeff_ , he thinks, and the idea causes a sour taste in the back of his throat.

He runs and he runs, and he probably breaks about twenty regulations, but he really could not care less. He would run to Nuwanda, complain about the state of the world and apologise and apologise and cry some more, but Nuwanda is gone. Everyone is leaving and changing and Todd doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to handle it.

He finds himself on top of the walkway that he had thrown his desk set off of, at Neil’s urging and contagious laughter. And kisses, later, but that wasn't for an open walkway for all to see.

 _Aerodynamic_ , he thinks. _The world’s first unmanned flying desk set._

Todd steps a little closer to the edge and looks down. Was this how Neil had felt, bound to circumstances he could not control, his parents forcing his hand, blocking him at every turn?

He closes his eyes.

Had Neil thought of him, in those final moment, in the beat between lifting the gun and pulling the trigger? Had he realised that Todd would miss him, taken the deep ache that has spread through his entire body into consideration? Had his love for Todd and Todd’s love for him made him hesitate?

Todd opens his eyes, and looks down, and steps back, back to the safety of the solid stone in the middle of the path. He has never been aerodynamic, in any sense of the word.

“I love you,” he whispers to the cold night air, and he hopes that Neil can hear him.

 

There were sixty-five days until Neil’s death, and he stood on top of his bed, script in hand, and Todd laughed at him from his own.

“I am that merry wanderer from the night,” he crowed, as Todd tried to tell him to quiet through his laughter.

“Geez, Neil,” he’d choked out finally, as he reached the end of his line, read too dramatically for such a sombre setting as a dorm. “I’d like to see you do that on stage.”

Neil had bounced down from the bed, practically collapsing across Todd. “Of course I won’t,” he scoffed. “I am a respectable actor.”

Todd laughed again, and Neil shoved him, and Todd shoved him back, and before they knew it they were tumbling off the bed in a tangle of limbs and joy and laughter. Todd’s head hit the floor, but it the fall wasn’t great and neither was the impact, so he only winced.

“Well,” Neil said, from where he lay half on top of Neil. “That wasn’t what I was going for. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Todd answered. “We should probably be more careful, though.”

“Yeah,” Neil agreed. “Probably.”

He stood, offering a hand to Todd, who lay there for a moment, staring at him.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Todd nodded, accepting his hand up. “Yeah, fine,” he assured him.

Neil grinned. “Great,” he said, and kissed him firmly on the lips. “That was what I wanted to do, before you laughed at me.”

“I love you,” Todd answered, and he wanted to regret the words the moment he says them but could not.

“I love you, too,” Neil answered, and his smile was tender and wide and so, so happy, and he had kissed him again, and again, and again.

 

It is the day after Neil’s death, and Todd’s fingers are still cold but he is at least respectable in his school uniform. Charlie and Knox are on either side of them, and it breaks the alphabetical order that the teachers have always been insistent on, but no one moves to separate them. Perhaps they, too, as daunting and separate as they are in their white hair and falling faces, are affected by the situation. That possibility is so absurd, that it is Neil, finally, who brings the teachers to some form of human emotion, that he almost wants to laugh. He would like that, anyway.

Instead, he bites his tongue and tries not to cry and lets the warmth of his friends on either side of him keep him standing. The world is blurred around him, and his throat is tight and aching and, _God_ , he can only feel pain, pain deeper than any he has felt before, worse than the time Jeff dared him to jump out of a tree and he broke his leg, more wrenching than anything he has ever even heard of.

 _There is a gap where you used to live_ , he thinks, his most coherent thought all day, but it is better by far than Nolan’s flimsy condolences and promises of vengeance. It is not the fault of Mr Keating. It is not the fault of the Dead Poets Society. It is not even the fault of Neil. No, it is the fault of Nolan himself, in his disapproval, of the Perrys in their dreams and plans that they forced on Neil until the end, and, he thinks, rebelliously, traitorously, joylessly, his own, in his inability to keep him there.

“It will be okay,” Charlie whispers into his ear.

Charlie knows, he realises, has figured out the secrets of all that was between them. The thought terrifies him, but the terror is dulled by pain and guilt and everything else that he never even thought that he could feel, so instead he nods, though he does not believe him, and leans into his side a little further.

 

A few hours before Neil died, he and Todd curled up on Todd’s bed, reading silently-- Neil his script, one last time, and Todd a book his brother had sent him. Neil, despite being taller, tucked his head against Todd’s chest.

Todd looked away from his book for the fifth time in as many minutes; Neil had not turned the page in all that time. But his breathing was not even enough for him to be asleep, and he had shifted around, trying to get comfortable.

“Are you okay?” Todd asked, and he could feel Neil nod against his chest.

“Just thinking,” he answered, the forced cheer painfully evident in his voice. “Only a few hours until opening night, you know?”

Todd looked at his watch. “Shouldn’t you…?”

“Yeah, probably.” He laughed, but it was still so forced, so flat. “You’re too warm.” Even so, he pushed off Todd, stretching and throwing his script onto his own bed.

“I’ll see you in a couple of hours?” Todd asked, still frowning.

“Of course.”

Todd nodded; there was nothing immediately wrong with the situation, nothing that could have caused distress or worry. Neil’s father is already in Chicago by now.

Neil slipped his jacket on, turning to leave before hesitating. “Give me a poem before I go?” he asked.

“Why?”

Neil shrugged, but there was something fragile in the set of his mouth. “Good luck.”

Todd closed his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “But only because it’s opening night. _There is life in him, and joy, passion to the brim, a boy, and yet so grown, and he my own._ ” It was on the spot and he despised it the moment it left his mouth, but when he opened his eyes, Neil was staring at him in this mix of wonder and joy and sorrow that made his heart wrench for a reason he could not fathom.

“Thank you,” Neil said, and leaned close, and kissed him.

Todd kissed back. “Welcome,” he whispered. “You should probably go.”

“Yeah,” Neil agreed. “I should, shouldn’t I?” He sighed, and stepped back, and when he smiled there was a glimpse of the Neil that Todd was used to. “In that case, until we meet again, fair love.”

Todd laughed. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours, Neil.”

“Of course you will,” Neil answered, and the smile didn’t falter. “Goodbye, Todd.”

“Goodbye, Neil,” Todd answered, still grinning as Neil left the room. “I’ll see you tooight.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how the American school year works, so my days are probably wildly inaccurate.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://www.peterdonalduck.tumblr.com/) xx


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